The big question, of course, is exactly what Google plans on doing with Motorola, Page's post was long on cheerleading and short on strategic answers. No surprise there, but Page does stress the importance of the mobile space, saying:

"It’s a well known fact that people tend to overestimate the impact technology will have in the short term, but underestimate its significance in the longer term. Many users coming online today may never use a desktop machine, and the impact of that transition will be profound--as will the ability to just tap and pay with your phone. That’s why it’s a great time to be in the mobile business, and why I’m confident Dennis and the team at Motorola will be creating the next generation of mobile devices that will improve lives for years to come."

Woodside, for his part, wrote in a release that "“Our aim is simple: to focus Motorola Mobility’s remarkable talent on fewer, bigger bets, and create wonderful devices that are used by people around the world.”

Motorola's news release notes that Woodside has brought on board execs from DARPA, Nokia, Google and NVIDIA (among others) and has retained a number of Motorola executives in their current roles, including product development, mass market products, software and enterprise and consumer experience design.

Read Page's full post and Motorola's release at the source links below.

@moosc,
Not sure what you mean by it's a carrier thing. If your referring to the ICS update and locked bootloader, neither of those issue are because of the carriers. They are directly a result of decisions made by Motorola. That is why Mororola put out their schedule earlier this year for updating their supported devices to ICS (after much public pressure), and that is why they also made public statements sometime earlier this year stating that future devices would not have the bootloaders locked. They took a lot of flak for the latter issue as they seemed to be the only mobile device manufacturer that still locked down their bootloaders. And a reason why I won't be buying another Motorola device unless they follow through and start offering devices with unlocked bootloaders.

It's a carrier thing for that specific model HTC and AT&T. But we are talking about Motorola and it has been common knowledge (and publicly stated by Mororola) that they lock their bootloaders and not the carriers. Why do you think my Moto device has a locked bootloader but my GFs HTC device doesn't(same carriers). And BTW, you are talking about AT&T, IMO one of least customer friendly carriers in existence. I personally would never use AT&T, but to each their own. The droid Razr (Verizon) bootloader is locked by Moto and not Verizon. A google search will show you that the majority of mobile devices with locked bootloaders are done on the manufacturer level and not by the carrier.

P.S. It also looks like this is the first mobile device AT&T carries where they locked they bootloader. This seems to be a new move for them for god knows what reasons other than to further screw their customers.

that actually isn't the case, Verizon wrote to the FCC and said locked bootloaders were their policy, google it and you'll see it. Verizon basically has Moto by the junk, or a very large contract, which would explain why not all the devices get the locked bootloader treatment. They say it's to protect customers, and most of their customers are rocking Motorolas so it makes perfect sense.

HTC also has a bootloader unlock tool for devs to use with said devices. Motorola does not.

Do you really think it's 100% the carriers though? I mean to say, why would a carrier like Verizon carry phones with and without encrypted bootloaders on their shelves. If they really were pushing for locked down bootloaders, wouldn't it make more sense if ALL of their devices had encrypted, unhackable bootloaders?

They started locking their phones down whenever the Qualcomm S2 devices were coming out. This is what prompted people to plead with HTC to give us a tool to use for unlocking. So think T-Mobile G2, Droid Incredible 2, EVO 3D, etc etc...

You can buy a unlocked devoloper razzer from Google its GSM of course u can also buy a razr in europe and unlock it. As for ics its there call. Oh u can argue that there are custom roms but not perfect or bug free. And yes its carrier requesting the lock down. I could dig up all the articles on it but I'm to tired.

And I dig up just as many articles that show Motorolas statements acknowleding it is they who lock the bootloaders of their devices and not the carriers. They also made numerous statments about how they would start offering customers a way to unlock the bootloader starting this year which still has yet to happen.

The one phone you listed is a developer phone, thus the unlocked bootloader. Wouldn't do the developers much good to get one that is locked. However, carriers don't typically offer developer phones, which is why you have to buy it direct. And it may be very possible that the country in which you reside may require phones to have unlocked bootloaders as part of the trade agreement. Regardless, in the US it is Motorola locking the bootloader of their devices.

I know Google needs to keep their other hardware partners happy and not make radical changes for now with Motorola. But c'mon, Google! End users deserve to see a benefit from this! How about unlocking the bootloaders Motorola promised its users to unlock yet never deliver on that promise. How about updates to ICS for Motorola handsets from 2011?

Yeah, I'm hoping that now this merger is a done deal that Google will drastically change Moto policies and start deploying more timely updates as well as devices with unlocked bootloaders. Otherwise, this will be my first and last Moto mobile device, which is sad because I like their devices, they are well built. That said, my next device will most likely be back to HTC.

Most ROMs will need unlocked bootloader because they need to change the kernel which you can only do if the bootloader is unlocked. But yes, as long as the ROM uses the stock kernel, then the bootloader doesn't need to be unlocked. Problem is, like in my instance, I would like to install a ROM that updates my device from GB to ICS. That is only possible by changing the kernel and thus, requiring the bootloader to be unlocked. It is possible, and easy, to unlock the bootloader on my Moto device, however doing so disables the 4G radio. Currently no one has been able to unlock the bootloader without disabling the radio.

Jha has a Ph.D. in electronic and electrical engineering. In lite of CEO's, COO's being forced to resign or fired, one thing is very apparent, the higher education may assist you in getting a job, it will not help you keep your job. I want to say this as well... If you're a proud American you should believe in the saying, "American companies, American people".

The list is a reminder that our country was not built solely on the successes of natural born Americans, but on the immigration of great minds from around the globe. Swapping out an executive whose decisions create a better company is far different than outsourcing divisions of company.
I could also start another list with the likes of Jeff Immelt, a natural born Ameican, who took an entire division of GE from Wisconsin to China.

Did someone give you a rope know you want to be a cowboy? You going all political does not change what I meant. Yeah this country was built on the backs of immigrant and slave workers, however. This country was/is NOT run by immigrants. We can banter all day if I let you run off the tracks. I am purely referring to American Companies.

Actually, this country is run by a mix of both natural born and immigrant citizens in the public and private sectors. There's nothing political about that statement or my previous ones, just pure fact. This stays on track with the original statement:

"If you're a proud American you should believe in the saying, "American companies, American people"

If you're wanting to keep American companies strong, then who cares where the COO's, CFO's, CIO's, or CEO's are from? All that should matter is that they build and maintain a successful organization while keeping their workforce intact and on our soil.

Assuming your response is sarcastic, I'm simply pointing out that I'm pretty sure Jha was Ok with losing his job by being an even bigger millionaire than he already was. Also, I wanted to point out that your original comment made about as much sense as your last one. Thank you though for your opinions, as sophomoric and misguided as they may be. Good day.

The "fewer, bigger bets" line is key to me. That means they are going to take a page from HTC, stop spamming the market with a billion minor phone variations, and focus in on a few devices. Hopefully that means those devices will be better supported as well!

I thought that quote was interesting as well, but from a different angle.

He starts out talking about less reliance on a desktop machine in the future, (its far from dead if you ask me), then slips right into mobile payments.

There is a disconnect in there, or at least a non-sequitur.

Desktop is not a POS payment device, and mobile still can't to the bulk of desktop work.

But it gives insight into his thinking that mobile payments are going to be key to the next phase of mobile development.

If so, why is Google wallet so horribly limited?

It installs on my international HTC One X, but Google says its not authorized for my carrier or country? Why should the carrier matter? I live in the US, have a Google wallet account, even bought the damn phone and paid for it with my Google Wallet. But I can't use Wallet on the phone?

You may be a "tech guy" but deffinity not an android guy. Droid's about customizing to your likely any which way you please with custom kernels and roms. If all you care about is "radio quality matched with external build quality, and some nice tech specs" than your next purchase should be an Iphone like the 42percent of the mobile market. For 95percent of android users we need a unlocked boot loader to do as we please.

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